Xerocole launches control app for ISPs

BOULDER – Xerocole Inc. used the buzz around the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to launch its new AnswerX Name Controls application there on Tuesday.

Boulder-based Xerocole spun off from a division of Canada-based Sandvine in 2010. It provides Internet service providers with filtering software and services for domain name systems that help make web surfing faster and safer for subscribers.

The Name Controls app is an extension of Xerocole’s products that allows an ISP’s Internet subscribers to opt in to rating categories similar to those used for movies, such as R or PG, for types of websites to allow to all connected devices at a home or business. A pin over-ride can be used to view sites that Name Controls flags. Name Controls can also guard against malware and phishing websites.

The settings made by the home or business’s account controller cover any devices connected to the internet there so that a business, for instance, could provide wireless internet in its lobby but still have some control over what sites patrons are visiting.

“Up until now, everybody’s had to download some sort of software for each device,” Xerocole chief executive and co-founder Frank Bergen said in a phone interview from Las Vegas.

ISPs can also provide subscribers with brandable smartphone apps that allow subscribers to adjust Name Controls settings from anywhere.

The Name Controls service costs ISPs about 30 cents per subscriber, Bergen said, and can be rolled into regular service or provided as a premium service. The product had been in pre-release beta on a 5 million-subscriber network.

“Now that it’s got mileage on it, we said this is a perfect time (to launch),” Bergen said.

Bergen, the main investor in Xerocole, has been involved in four previous startups, including founding bConnected Software Inc. in Louisville, which later was acquired by Florida-based Connextions Inc.

He said Xerocole’s 2013 revenue should come in around $10 million, with 30 to 35 percent growth each year since its founding.

Xerocole has 12 employees, including five at its headquarters at 1942 Broadway in Boulder. The company has an engineering office in New Hampshire.

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